Halloween Marks a Scary Time for Health Care in Illinois

If things don’t change soon, health care could be in for major setbacks in Illinois. The State budget battle is approaching its fifth month and counting.  So far, Medicaid payments continue per court order, but other services are beginning to run out of money:

State payments to 911 call centers throughout the Illinois have been suspended, putting emergency services in jeopardy.
Illinois has stopped paying medical and dental claims for 150,000 state employees. The long-term cost of delayed care for a group of this size could be far greater than the cost of paying for care and preventative care today.
The state’s Psychiatric Leadership Capacity Grant, which was $27 million in the State’s FY2015 budget, is no longer being funded, affecting most of the 140 community health centers in Illinois and thousands of people who rely on them for psychiatric care.

The longer the State budget impasse continues, the more services will be cut. These include services that indirectly have an impact on Illinois health care, such as after-school programs to keep kids out of trouble and supplemental nutrition programs, especially for the older adults.

It’s Not Too Late to Raise Your Voice!

Contact your State legislators to let them know how concerned you are about the future of health care in Illinois. Tell them that Illinois seniors and children are especially vulnerable. We can’t let cuts affect them.Many program cuts will result in greater costs to the State in the not-so-long run. For example:

• Home care services and home delivered meals to seniors citizens cost a fraction of the $75,000 annual cost of nursing home care. Cuts to these programs will mean more seniors ending up in nursing homes, paid for by Medicaid.
• Cut backs to after-school programs and Department of Children and Family Services support for older children will mean more kids and young adults intersecting with the justice system. Even short-term incarceration can pay for a full year of after-school activities for a child.
• Cut backs to mental health services will only cause an increase in city and country jail populations where the State will not only have to provide mental health services, but food, clothing and shelter.

And remind them that, as the State’s infrastructure crumbles and the State’s bond ratings tumble, it will only get more and more expensive to catch up.

Phillip Lanier
Health Policy Intern
Health & Disability Advocates

Key Lessons from Health & Medicine’s Budget Forum

 

On January 15, 2016, Health & Medicine hosted a meeting of The Chicago Forum for Justice in forum proceedings notes as a reference guide for the forum’s content.

Our notes are written as a summary and while they can’t fully capture the presentations, videos of each of the five mini panels are available on the event webpage, as are slides from speakers who used them in their presentations. We thank CAN TV for recording, editing, and sharing videos of the forum, extending the potential impact of our panelists’ presentations.

We hope these notes will be useful for advocates and policymakers seeking to understand issues related to the budget, think about potential revenue solutions, and consider strategies, framing, and narratives likely to advance progress.  Health & Medicine will be convening a small group soon to review the forum proceedings and discuss next steps for our work on this critical area, which we’ll share on our website.

While the budget problems and solutions are more complex than this, here are some main points that have emerged for me from conversations and from the presentations and discussion at the conference:

Illinois lacks sufficient revenue, which represents a structural budget problem, priming the State to have recurring budget shortages and hampering our ability to provide Illinoisans with the public services they need and want, thus harming the health of the public, and disproportionately harming vulnerable communities.

The structural budget problems have several potential revenue solutions, including a progressive income tax structure and efforts to ensure corporations pay their fair share, both of which are more equitable than our current system and would better grow revenue in proportion to the size of Illinois’ economy.

State elected officials are collectively responsible for passing a budget and using a selection of revenue solutions that will help preserve and improve the vital health, social, and education programs and services that support people’s health and Illinois’ economy.  Inaction on the structural revenue shortages that Illinois faces is an unacceptable abdication of the governing duties our public officials share.

Of course, these salient points are based on a range of facts and history about Illinois’ taxes and budgets, beyond the scope of this post.  A significant amount of such relevant detail is covered in the forum proceedings notes, as well as the slides and videos on the event webpage (linked to above).

Also, related to this subject, Health & Medicine’s Executive Director, Margie Schaps, had two letters focused on Illinois’ budget published in the last couple of weeks:

Consider the long-term consequences Regarding the recent layoffs at Lutheran Social Services of Illinois published in Crain’s Chicago Business
Illinois needs a budget. Governor Rauner, let’s get it done.  A response to Governor Rauner’s State of the State Address in the Chicago Tribune


Wesley Epplin
Director of Health Equity
Health & Medicine Policy Research Group